Guesswork: A Reckoning With Loss [Paperback]

[A] splendid and subtle memoir in essays The New York Times Book Review

Having lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband. There, in a rural paradise where bumblebees nest in the ancient cemetery and stray cats curl up on her bed, she examines a question both easily evaded and unavoidable: mortality. How do we grieve? How do we go on drinking our morning coffee, loving our life partners, stumbling through a world of such confusing, exquisite beauty?

Linking the essays is Cooleys escalating understanding of another loss on the way, that of her ailing mother back in the States. Blind since Cooleys childhood, her mother relies on dry wit to ward off grief and pity. There seems no way for the two of them to discuss her impending death. But somehow, by the end, Cooley finds the words, each one graceful and wrenching.

Part memoir, part loving goodbye to an unconventional parent,Guessworktransforms a year in a pastoral hill town into a fierce examination of life, love, death, and, ultimately, release.Martha Cooley is the author of the national bestsellerThe ArchivistandThirty-Three Swoons.The Archivistwas aNew York TimesNotable Book and a New and Noteworthy paperback. Cooley is currently a contributing editor atA Public Space. Her co-translations of Italian fiction and poetry include Antonio Tabucchis story collectionTime Ages in a Hurry. A professor of English at Adelphi University, Cooley divides her time between Queens, New York, and Castiglione del Terziere, Italy. Her American cat, Zora, is named after one of the cities in Italo CalvinosInvisible Cities, and their Italian cat, Tristana, is named after the medieval knight.Praise forGuesswork

[A] splendid and subtle memoir in essays The New York Times Book Review

As delightful and multi-faceted as the tiny medieval Italian village Cooley spenlW